ioo CHARLES DARWIN 



special peculiarities in a manner that was at bottom 

 essentially supernatural, or in other words miraculous ; 

 whereas Darwin thinks of it as the necessary result of 

 the circumstances themselves, an inevitable outcome of 

 indefinite variability plus the geometrical rate of in- 

 crease. Where Lyell sees a final cause, Darwin sees an 

 efficient cause ; and this distinction is fundamental. It 

 marks Darwin's position as that of a great philosophi- 

 cal thinker, who can dash aside at once all metaphysical 

 cobwebs, and penetrate to the inmost recesses of things, 

 unswerved by the vain but specious allurements of 

 obvious and misleading teleological fallacies. 



Darwin also laid great stress on the immense com- 

 plexity of the relations which animals and plants bear 

 to one another, in the struggle for existence. For 

 example, on the heathy uplands near Farnham in 

 Surrey, large spaces were at one time enclosed, on 

 which, within ten years, self-grown fir-trees from the 

 wind-borne seeds of distant clumps sprang up so 

 thickly as actually to choke one another with their tiny 

 branches. All over the heaths outside, when Darwin 

 looked for them, he could not find a single fir, except 

 the old clumps on the hilltops, from which the seedlings 

 themselves had originally sprung. But, on looking 

 closer among the stems of the heath, he descried a 

 number of very tiny firs, which had been perpetually 

 browsed down by the cattle on the commons ; and one 

 of them, with twenty-six rings of growth, had during 

 many years endeavoured unsuccessfully to raise its 

 head above the surrounding heather. Hence, as soon 

 as the land was enclosed, and the cattle excluded, it 

 became covered at once with a thick growth of vigorous 



